[4] After four years away, Cliff Harnish (Michael Dolan) returns to his hometown of Pocahontas, Virginia in a bid to stop his parents' divorce.

Unsuccessful, he finds that his mother, Martha (Tess Harper), has turned to alcohol while his father, Mark (Raymond J. Barry), is seeing a woman called Glory (Karen Allen).

[8] Ray Pride of the Chicago Reader wrote that despite its "pictorial and emotional strengths", the film is "too rooted in its theatrical origins to be truly memorable."

He also commented that Puopolo "directs his cast as if they were giving a stage performance, which means that the realism of the film's location not only ensures the artificiality of the entire endeavor but also shows up the many flaws in the basic material as well.

"[10] In a negative review of the home video release, Dave Nuttycombe of the Washington City Paper called the film a "tiredly talky Southern Gothic drama".

The British tabloid press, which described the film as a "B movie", reported that Anderson had tried to buy it back for "large sums of money" without success.

[12][13][14] Despite the controversy, the Orange County Register judged the scene to be "fleeting" and argued that the film "deserves better than to serve as a salacious footnote to a television show.

Club, who described The Turning as an "unconvincing melodrama", argued that the film had been re-released purely for the "one brief love scene featuring Anderson, much tamer than the video box's lurid cover would suggest.